Music That Makes Me Nostalgic For Specifics

Thompson Twins. “If I were king for just one day …” It reminds me of that surging feeling of HOPE I used to get, on occasion, in high school. I was a creature of deep yearnings, and stifled ambition. I knew what I wanted but I was afraid to go for it. I loved boys with an intensity that burned up my heart, and at that time they never loved me back. I loved hard, got hurt hard … and still held up this strange strong hope that someday I would meet “him”, whoever he was. Thompson Twins, and that song in particular, make me think of that of that feeling.

Billy Idol. I hear his stuff and all I can see is my group of friends going absolutely MAD on some high school dance floor.

John Denver. Summer days when I was a little kid. Windows open, screen door slamming, lips stained from Kool Aid, sand between my toes, sitting on the hot metal of the bulkhead having popsicles. To me, that’s what John Denver’s music calls to mind.

Lover Boy. “You wanna piecea my he-eart …” To me, that song IS roller-skating at Ocean Skate every Friday night in high school. We would get dropped off, we would be wearing cute little tops and jeans, we would have on fruit-flavored lip gloss … and we would have all of these teen-romance adventures, completely defined by the roller rink. That Lover Boy song was THE song to skate to (with “You Should Hear How He Talks About You” a close second).

Jackson Browne. “Hold On, Hold Out”. That song in particular. I was 17 years old, it was autumn. My life was exploding on all fronts: I was having an acting triumph that changed my life, and I had fallen in love with someone so hard that it felt like I was staring directly at the sun, but in the meantime I was also being pursued for the first time in my life by a guy – by a DIFFERENT guy … 2 guys? And both of them were in their early 20s, too. I had it GOIN’ ON, even though I was a blushing freckled girl who had never been so much as kissed. But because I’m me, falling in love is always a painful experience; I would never characterize love as pleasant. And that Jackson Browne song arrived at the perfect time in my life … when I SO needed to hear its message. I listened to it constantly. When I hear it now, I immediately see before my eyes: the face of the guy I was madly in love with, the coldness of the autumn air, the explosion of stars in the sky – he and I stood on my front lawn staring up at them, after seeing 2010 – I couldn’t stand it I loved him so much, and there was always that painful feeling of hope and loss that accompanied love in high school. Time slipping away … you cannot capture the moment … the moment cannot last … just eat it up while it is happening … because every second means the sands are slipping away …

ELO. Please. Let’s not even TALK about ELO. I listened to their Time album for the first time over at Mere’s house, and could not believe what I was hearing. I had grown up listening to musicals, John Denver, Ian & Sylvia (the real-life Mitch and Mickey), and Joan Baez. This?? I had never heard anything like it. I can still remember exactly what the cover looked like, the blueness of it, the sci-fi magic of it. I listened to it over and over and over. When I think of ELO, I think of Mere and I, and her living room, with the piano bench, and the couches, and hanging out at her house endlessly.

Devo. On all fronts, Devo was a life-changer. Guys in my high school suddenly felt proud of being geeks, of wearing glasses, and of being in the AV Club. Devo made geek-boys cool and subversive. Devo is another band where – when I hear one of their songs – especially “Whip It” – what I immediately see is the gyrating orgasmic thrashing crowd at my high school dance. The cavernous gym, the DJ under one of the empty basektball hoops, the lights turned down low, high school romance-dramas going on in the bleechers, and people LOSING it on the dance floor. Sometimes the dance floor would empty out, because a song didn’t have a good beat. But when Devo played? People flocked in from every which way to pack it in on the dance floor. Devo IS high school to me.

Cliff Eberhardt. I actually was unable to listen to Cliff Eberhardt for many years because of the powerful associations. Cliff Eberhard for me IS Tonio, my first boyfriend. Tonio and I were going to see Christine Lavin in Philadelphia, and Cliff Eberhardt opened for her. We had never heard of him. He blew us away. “My Father’s Shoes”. It kills me. He and I loved Eberhardt so much that we played him CONSTANTLY. Once the relationship crashed and burned, I found I could no longer listen to Eberhardt. Years passed, though … and finally I am able to be a fan again. But still. The associations remain, it’s just that they no longer cause me pain. Cliff Eberhardt to me is: the black and white tile in our kitchen, the green trees crowding in around our porch, the taste of scotch and soda, the rainy nights when we would go to the little art cinema in Philly … the cobblestoned streets of Mt. Airy …

J. Geils. Freeze Frame is a time-travel capsule. It’s another high school favorite. We would wait for it feverishly, every high school dance, repeatedly asking the beleaguered DJ to play it … and when he did? We all would lose our minds. Beth and I would dance so hard that our faces would become beet red, and afterwards, we would run over to the side of the gym and press our sweaty flushed faces against the cool tile. Uhm … girls? You wanna chill? You want boys to like you and notice you and think you’re pretty? Then stop jamming your red Irish faces against the tile walls of the high school gym, mkay?

Huey Lewis. It’s the song “Do You Believe in Love” that really sets the pinwheels of associations going. It’s such a free song, such a happy open song. When I hear it I think of summer vacations during high school: EARLY in the vacation, say … the month of June. When there’s so much free time spread out in front of you … and everything seems possible. You go to the beach with your friends. You sit around watching soap operas, vegging out, the day unfurling before you with nothing on the books … You go to movies with your friends, and you don’t have to get up early the next day …Definitely not the August part of vacation, which is stressful because school approaches, and you’re supposed to have read Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities and Red Badge of Courage by September and you haven’t even STARTED. No, “Do You Believe in Love” reminds me of the June month during summer vacations in high school.

Stevie Ray Vaughn. Especially his song with his brother: “Tick Tock People” of all things. A very specific memory is attached to that one song, and although I don’t hear the song often – when I do, here is what I see/smell/taste: Southport Lanes (a really cool bar/bowling alley in Chicago), I was wearing a black derby, he and I ate hot chicken wings, and occasionally attacked each other. It was our third date, I think. Nothing had happened yet. We were insane for each other. “Tick Tock People” came on and he told me the story of how he had been at Stevie Ray Vaughn’s last concert, and unfortunately he had been with his anorexic girlfriend who made him go get her some food and while he was in the endless line the damn concert started. I don’t think he ever forgave anorexia-girl for making him miss the first couple of songs “because she HADN’T EATEN ANYTHING ALL DAY” he shouted. It was a vivid night. Perhaps I remember it because it was the beginning of something that would last for years. A 2nd or 3rd date. Stevie Ray Vaughan always makes me think of him, and “Tick Tock People” makes me think of that crystal-clear night of flirtation, his mouth on my neck, laughter, and hot chicken wings.

XTC. It is “1,000 Umbrellas” that is attached to a very specific time and place. It was on a mix tape given to me the guy I had been in love with. I knew of the song, always loved XTC, but it was like I had heard it for the first time when it came up on my walkman, that sickly summer, when my heart was so fucking broken I couldn’t even eat. “1000 Umbrellas” makes me see the echoey lobby of the office building in the Loop where I worked as a temp, the careening escalators filled with droid-like humans at rush hour, the Chicago Opera House across the sluggish green opaque river, sitting on the L train in the morning, listening to 1,000 Umbrellas over and over and over and over … It fed something in me that was starving. Not just because it had been on a mix he had given me. It was something else. I was starving and heartsick. I stood in the muffled heat of the day, staring across at the Opera House, wondering when I would ever feel normal again. I could only listen to 1,000 Umbrellas, I couldn’t get past it. “Just when I thought that my vista was golden in hue, One thousand umbrellas opened to spoil the view …” But the music itself wasn’t wallowy dark PMS-drippy music. It was weird, complex, with violins, and orchestral oddness … I remember walking around and around outside that office building, in the heat wave, unable to eat, squinting at the sun off the concrete, listening to the song repeatedly. “Now I’m crawling the wallpaper that’s looking more like a roadmap to misery …” I listen to that song now and I remember how unbelievably hot it was that summer, and how there was no escape. From the heat, but also from my heartsick-ness. No way out but through. I emerged forever changed.

Cher. We would blast “Dark Lady” at our college parties (down in the beach house at Sand Hill Cove) and Mitchell would take over the entire scene. So when I hear that song: I see Mitchell, surrounded by his group of friends – all of us laughing so hard that occasionally we have to leave the party to go take a walk and calm down. The smell of the salt air, the sound of the surf at the end of the street, the boozy college party of drama geeks … and stomach-aching howls of laughter. “Dark Lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one …” It was the mid-80s, but it didn’t matter to us. “Dark Lady” might as well have been a Top 40 hit at that point, as far as we were concerned. We would watch Mitchell transform, and then promptly – the second he “became” Cher – we would all start to stagger about, slapping each other, wiping tears away, falling on the ground … We never ever got tired of it. Then we would take a walk in the briny breeze, gasping for breath, trying to recover from the hilarity.

Hair Too many associations to list. That album has always existed, I grew up alongside of it, it’s always been a part of my life. “Frank Mills” always always always makes me think of my friend Betsy, who loved that song, and who sang it for one of our projects in drama class in high school. I have the album, and I know what that woman’s voice sounds like … but whenever I listen to it, I hear Betsy’s sweet soprano. Beautiful. And “Aquarius” never ever EVER fails to make me think of Pat =, and my friends who were all “Pat heads”. Kenny, Phil, Ann, Mitchell, Alex … sometimes Pat would BLAST “Aquarius” at the end of his shows, and on one evening in particular – I do not know what happened, but Kenny, Phil, Ann, me, and Mitchell lost our minds. We WENT somewhere. We danced like maniacs, but it was more than that. We transcended. You know when you lose self-consciousness? When you flat out don’t care? We all achieved that energy together – with no drugs – at the same moment. It was a spontaneous group event. There was even spontaneous choreography that we generated – it was like we all became ONE BEING during that song. Goofy? Definitely. Fun? More fun than one person should be allowed in a 3 minute time span. When the song ended, we felt like we had to come back to earth, and it was very difficult. Kenny exclaimed, “I have to do that EVERY SINGLE DAY.” And I remember Phil saying, with complete seriousness, “I honestly feel like I was just performing in the original production of Hair.” hahahaha You’d have to know what Phil looked like, to fully appreciate the humor of this. Big goofy handsome cleancut straight boy. All of this rushes through my mind when I hear that whole “LEEEEET THE SUN SHINE …” magnificence.

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Tori Amos The “Little Earthquakes” album. That is, without a doubt, the summer of 1992. My first summer in Chicago. I had my own apartment on Melrose. Right by the lake. There was a sickly sweet odor of roach-motels throughout the hallways, and a crazy old-fashioned metal elevator, with grate-like metal doors you had to wrench open and closed. I ran every day along the lake, I ran miles and miles a day. And listened to “Little Earthquakes” as I ran, along the sweep of Lake Michigan, looking at the skyline – the Sears Tower, the Drake Hotel … and Tori’s unbelievable music pushed me on. More than anything else, that album was the music of my freedom. I’ve rarely felt so free as I felt that summer. Also, randomly: I was very much into eating Cracklin’ Oat Bran that summer. I had a bowl every morning. So now whenever I hear the first strains of the first song on “Little Earthquakes”, I remember the taste of Cracklin’ Oat Bran. Weird, how memory works. It’s always summer when I listen to that album. And it’s always sunset.

I listened to “Little Earthquakes” one too many times. I can’t imagine a time when I would ever choose that album to listen to now … it had served its purpose. Like a fever burning out.